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So, you know Dracula?

Elizabeth Miller, a world-renowned expert on the Bram Stoker's novel, lists 20 misconceptions about the writer and his famous story on her Web site

Elizabeth Miller, a world-renowned expert on the Bram Stoker's novel, lists 20 misconceptions about the writer and his famous story on her Web site

www.ucs.mun.ca/~emiller/. Here are five of our favorites:

* Stoker traveled to Transylvania to do research on vampires.

* "Nosferatu" is a Romanian word for "vampire." (It's not a word in any known language, said Elizabeth Fuller of the Rosenbach Museum & Library. The word was found by Stoker in a English-language book on Transylvanian superstitions and appears in "Dracula." It may be a distortion of a Greek or Romanian word that means "devil" or "carriers of plague."

* Count Dracula is destroyed after a stake is driven through his heart. (He disintegrates into dust, says Fuller.)

* Count Dracula cannot go out into the sunlight. (He appears in daylight from time to time, Fuller says.)

* Stoker's inspiration for Count Dracula was Vlad the Impaler. (Scholars believe the character was based in part on Stoker's boss, actor Henry Irving, but Fuller thinks Stoker may have created it as a potential role for Irving.)

- Regina Medina